The Adventures of Roderick Random

Doctor Tells Absurd Oyster Check Story for Medlar

While Medlar is still talking, a young man in black velvet and an enormous tie-wig enters, his air a confused jumble of levity and affected solemnity. He dances over to their table, makes grimaces, addresses Medlar by name, and asks if they are engaged on business, requesting permission to whisper. When Medlar curtly refuses whispering, the “doctor” profusely apologizes to the narrator and proceeds aloud. After ceremonial hems, the doctor recounts that he has just dined with Lady Flareit, naming several fashionable guests (Lady Stately, Lady Larum, Mrs. Dainty, Miss Biddy Giggler, Lord Straddle, Sir John Shrug, Master Billy Chatter) and emphasizing his exhaustion after visiting fifteen patients. He then explains that Mr. Chatter, alarmed at not having seen Medlar for nineteen and a half hours, fears he must be very ill from having eaten a vast quantity of raw oysters the previous night, and has sent the doctor to check on him. Medlar, expecting something momentous, erupts angrily at the triviality, curses the oysters, and storms off. The doctor, protesting his amazement, follows Medlar to the bar and whispers so loudly that the narrator overhears him asking who the gentleman is; Medlar, irritated, blames the intrusion for not having learned earlier and departs in disappointment.

Doctor Rambles About Coffee and Drink Etymology

Returning to the narrator’s table with a thousand pardons, the doctor explains that what he had communicated to Medlar was an affair of the last importance admitting no delay, then calls for coffee and launches into its praises. He claims the berry is beneficial in cold phlegmatic constitutions like his own, drying superfluous moisture and bracing the nerves, and asserts it was utterly unknown to the ancients, deriving its name from an Arabian word evident from the sound. He then shifts to a learned disquisition on the verb “drink,” arguing it is improperly applied to coffee, since people sip rather than drink it; he maintains the true meaning is either to quench thirst or to debauch oneself with wine. He distinguishes the Latin bibere and potare and the Greek pinein and poteein, conjecturing that potare and poteein signify vast quantities (a river being potamos), while bibere and pinein denote moderate use, the latter supported by “bibulous” applied to pores that can imbibe only small amounts of surrounding moisture.